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Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 9:35 am
by GradualGames
psycopathicteen wrote:I wish I can have a schedule, but my parents just randomly ask me to do chores around the house.
Perhaps you could negotiate with them. I was actually in a very similar situation but with my wife when I began this hobby, she demanded a lot of my time, and at seemingly random times. When I finally basically gave her 60/40 so that basically specific 3 evenings a week were "mine" and the other four evenings were whatever we wanted to do together or chores or what not, it kinda settled in to a routine. Seems like a big sacrifice, but it wound up guaranteeing me a specific time every week I knew I was going to work on something. I'm not certain how old you are but if your parents are not reasonable enough to negotiate with you, it might be time to leave. For some reason I thought you were at least 18 or older. If not, just hang in there...

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 10:14 am
by Drew Sebastino
GradualGames wrote:For some reason I thought you were at least 18 or older. If not, just hang in there...
Same here. Of course, he could still be living with his parents, (I know several people who are going to college but still stay at their home because it's close by) but the whole chores thing sounds odd for another adult. In my house, if something needs to be done, somebody typically just volunteers. We're not that uptight about housekeep though; some people I know vacuum the whole house once a week while we just do it when we see enough crumbs on the kitchen floor to bother.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 10:53 am
by psycopathicteen
Im 27. My parents aren't even letting me buy a car.

I live in a one story house, with a neat freak mom, a dead beat dad, and lots old junk "with memories attached to them. "

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:36 am
by tepples
What do you do for a day job?

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:39 am
by psycopathicteen
Make boxes for men's suits.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 6:19 pm
by ccovell
psycopathicteen wrote:...and lots old junk "with memories attached to them. "
Easy, easy, now. That's how the NES and SNES, etc. are to a lot of us.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 7:16 pm
by gauauu
psycopathicteen wrote:Im 27. My parents aren't even letting me buy a car.

I live in a one story house, with a neat freak mom, a dead beat dad, and lots old junk "with memories attached to them. "
Is it time to move out on your own and decide for yourself if you should get a car?

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 8:35 pm
by tokumaru
I've heard that in the US and several other countries it can be weird to be an adult and still live with your parents, but here in Brazil it's extremely common. Also, if you can afford a car and a place to park it on your own, most parents won't object.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 10:17 pm
by Drew Sebastino
It's pretty damn weird by the age of 27 in the US.
gauauu wrote:
psycopathicteen wrote:Is it time to move out on your own and decide for yourself if you should get a car?
He can't exactly be making a good living assembling boxes. However, I'd still try and leave asap.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:33 pm
by psycopathicteen
The irony is I would have more time looking for a better job if I lived on my own quietly.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2017 4:30 am
by Stef
To be honest i've somehow the same issue, it takes me more and more time to code just because i overthink the thing, trying to anticipate future evolution / use case.. but sometime doing that is just counter productive. You waste too much time in that and does not make any progress at all (or very few). I think you should do with a "ok structure" to start with, which is not perfect but which make thing work. Then you can improve it with time, when you will really need it.
Also in your specific case here, i'm surprised you are joining "object" and "sprite" structure, at least imo it's something i would separate, object would have a reference on sprite, and sprite would only store information about the sprite itself, how to display it where object store more high level object information (object state, speed, ...). Of course that depend from your code, maybe you glued your object / sprite handling code together to make it faster..

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2017 8:55 am
by psycopathicteen
I couldn't come up with a way to do dynamic animation without having one meta-sprite per object.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2017 5:17 pm
by Rahsennor
My advice for anyone who thinks they're programming too slowly is just do it. Hack each new feature in as fast as possible. Results mean feedback. Feedback means progress. Worry about cleaning up once it's working and debugged.

That said, I actually spend more time cleaning than I do adding. The trick is to make your code easy to modify, and I don't mean lifting constants out and naming them. I mean pulling related functionality together so you don't have to scroll and tab around for hours looking for every site that needs to be updated with each new addition, and factoring out repeated code so you don't have to keep duplicating the changes.

It also helps to keep your code concise and readable, so that the you from six months into the future can figure out what it does without choking on the spaghetti. It's a self-reinforcing cycle - the sloppier your initial code, the more practice you get at organizing it, and the more you organize it the faster it is to tear it up again. Don't be afraid to start over, either; sometimes a good re-write is just what you need to give yourself a refresher course in whatever it is you're doing, and lose some excess baggage along the way.

That's my two cents, anyway. I wrote more in the first twelve months of this approach than I did in the previous twelve years, and I haven't slowed down since. YMMV of course, so take it with a grain of salt.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2017 10:01 pm
by Oziphantom
This is the 90/90 rule.

The thing with games is when you have nothing, adding one thing is a massive change. When it scrolls the game has increased by 300%, when you add entity 2 its now 100% bigger, when you add entity 50, its the same as it was before.
When you add feature X you have to make sure it works with everything else and it doesn't break something, when there are 3 things to break it doesn't take long to make sure. When you have 50 things you need to make sure you don't break then you have to spend a lot more time checking things, making sure you don't trash this or that.
When you test before you had a simple level with the thing right at the start. Now you have to have set up, you need to fire the trigger, the level needs to be set just so, you need this weapon and that weapon etc. This slows down the iteration speed.
There will be a bug, and to fix that bug you need to refactor the code, no way around it. This then means you spent 1 week rewriting some code and testing it, to then finally hit build, run and see that it look 100% like it did before and that is a good thing.
Once you get the Beta you game is mostly complete and now you have to polish, this is where the other 90% comes from. You will spend just as long polishing and fixing glitches and smoothing jump curves etc as it took to make the whole thing.
Keep a few old builds around and then go back and play them when you feel like you have achieved very little, you will see you have actually come a long way, just each little step doesn't feel like it.

Re: Why is programming taking so dang long for me nowadays?

Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 3:52 am
by Stef
psycopathicteen wrote:I couldn't come up with a way to do dynamic animation without having one meta-sprite per object.
Having a meta sprite per object is ok, when i said sprite i meant "sprite" in general term (as i do in SGDK) as the visible movable element, in fact below i always have a meta sprite in SGDK as well. The thing is more about the object itself which can be anything... and should be, at least in my opinion, a mutable object.
Basically my view is something like this :

Code: Select all

Enemy / Player / Item / ...
|-Object
  -status
  -spriteRef
  - ...
Where Enemy, Player, Item are derived from Object... And Object own basic object stuff + a reference on a (meta) Sprite object.